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Sustainable
Destruction
While
Marxist president Robert Mugabe was being applauded as a
key note speaker at the World Summit on Sustainable Development,
his supporters were slaughtering endangered wildlife and
destroying huge forests and game reserves in Zimbabwe. Some
of the greatest game reserves in Africa have been in Zimbabwe.
Now these wildlife sanctuaries are the scenes of unprecedented
slaughter. Most of the wildlife has been senselessly slaughtered
by blood-thirsty mobs of ZANU-PF’s ‘war veterans’
and youth militia. Vast herds of elephant and the endangered
Black Rhino, cheetah, leopard and antelope have been snared,
speared, shot or blown up.
Just
in the Save Valley most of its 1 200 elephant and Black
Rhino have been killed. The game rangers have recovered
over 1 089 dead animals from snares. They have also discovered
over 27 000 snares, equating to about 40 km’s of wire.
These mine fields of cable snares, scattered throughout
the game reserve, are strangling and starving their victims
to death. In addition to snaring the animals, the poachers
have been using packs of dogs to run the animals down. They
are then speared or axed to death by mobs.
In
Bubiana, an estimated 30 000 animals have been slaughtered
in the last 18 months. Many have had only a limb cut off
for the poachers’ pot, leaving the rest of the carcass
to rot. Bubiana has one of the largest rhino populations
in the world, 50% of which are believed to have already
been killed. In addition to the decimation of wildlife,
the destruction of the habitat has also been severe. Bubiana
has lost an estimated 240 000 trees, whilst 50% of Chiredzi’s
270 000 acres have been destroyed. A whole ecosystem is
being destroyed.
In
the Kariba area, game rangers have found 33 elephant that
had been shot, and 65 land mines have been lifted from game
paths. The 5 000 hectare game sanctuary near Chiredzi has
been entirely burned out.
The
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force reports that, in the Midlands,
four of the game ranches had lost 80% of their wildlife.
On land that has been officially “fast tracked”
by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government, there’s no game
left at all. In the Midlands, the game is being shot, not
snared, and there are suggestions that the police and army
are behind
the
poaching in these areas. Along with the wholesale poaching,
Marxist mobs have been engaged in wholesale theft, abductions
and murder. Properties have been burned out, tourists have
been chased out of safari camps, and game rangers have been
disarmed, severely assaulted and even killed.
Incredibly,
while President Robert Mugabe has been destroying what were
once some of the most successful farms and game reserves
in Africa, the World Summit on Sustainable Development actually
had Mugabe address the Summit, with many enthusiastically
applauding his racist ramblings. How can we take such a
Summit seriously?
“How
long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field
be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the
animals and birds have perished.”
Jeremiah 12:4
Dr.
Peter Hammond
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